Men's Water Polo

Water Polo Falls to Johns Hopkins, 10-9

Nov 22, 2008

Nov. 22, 2008

Courtesy of CWPA

ANNAPOLIS, Md. -- Kyle Gertridge, Jamie Neuwirth, Peter Sauerhoff and John Barrett all scored pairs of goals to power Johns Hopkins University to a 10-9 win over the MIT men's water polo team, in the second round of the Collegiate Water Polo Eastern Championship Saturday.

The win places Johns Hopkins into the fifth place game at 10:30 a.m. on Sunday, November 23 versus Bucknell University. MIT will meet Iona at 9:00 a.m. on Sunday in the seventh place game. The Engineers fell, 12-11, to the Gaels for the second time this season at the Northern Division Championship just two weeks ago.

Leading 5-3 at halftime, the Blue Jays saw their lead sliced to a goal as MIT's Mike Smith-Bronstein ripped a shot inside a post at the 6:32 mark of the third period. Hopkins fired back with a score by Barrett on an exclusion chance at 4:52, but the Engineers returned the margin to a goal with 54 seconds left in the period as Matt Chapa scored to pull MIT to within 6-5 with eight minutes of play left.

The fourth period saw an explosion of offense as Neuwirth buried an exclusion goal at 7:21, Mark Artz tallied an advantage goal at 6:38 to pull MIT back to within 7-6, Sauerhoff scored a natural goal at 4:38 to push the margin back to two and Devin Lewis tallied a marker for the Engineers to put the score at 8-7 with 4:25 left in the fourth period.

The teams continued the pattern as Neuwirth scored for Hopkins at 4:10, Lewis tallied another goal for MIT at 3:42 and Gertridge rifled a penalty shot home at 3:27 to put the Blue Jays in front 10-8.

MIT attempted to comeback as Smith-Bronstein scored on a penalty shot at 1:31, but the JHU defense locked down as the Engineers final shot with four seconds left on the clock sailed high to hand the Blue Jays the win.

The game was a dramatic shift from the last meeting between the two teams as Johns Hopkins captured the Division III Eastern title, the 11th in program history, in Baltimore with a 22-15 victory over MIT on October 26.

In cage, Chris Hutchens made 13 saves to earn the win, while Columbus Leonard stopped five shots for MIT.